The Napoleon album is a big ball of sunshine! Just in time for a Denver winter.

Update: Napoleon The Bohemians Won the Series and the Little Guy Joined the Band. Terrible terrible title! But it is a marvelous record. It's a bit Orlando, minus the narcissistic pathos, it's a bit Wham! on a budget, it's a bit ABC minus the geriatrics and perhaps this may have been where the Push Kings had ended up if they hadn't decided to become awful human beings instead. It's soul music, allegedly. It's bouncy, jangly pop with an earnest, seemingly uninhibited singer. It is Montt Mardie gone even more camp. Montt Mardie with more friends. I like the first song's title I Try to Despise the Ugly People(but the Beautiful Ones Keep Turning Me Down). There are loads of horns, loads of voices, and joy abounds all about the room when I am listening. It is deliriously mad music. If you don't like this then you are probably now or formerly have been a Push King! Honestly. Second track. Listen to all of those silly "baby's". Marvelous. He can sing, really, he can sing rather wonderfully, he's frantic and on key, groovy organ and it's a bit like Saturday Looks Good To Me if instead of being emo tiresomes they were constructed from polyester and rhinestones. There is a bunch of Napoleon's. I borrowed this record from an illicit mp3-sharing site. Sorry Napoleon. I read that you chose your name because you want to conquer the world. I do want to help you do this! I love this record. I would tell all of my friends about Napoleon but I don't have any friends. Sorry. So I will write a random string of sentence fragments to do my part instead. Short songs. Awesome songs. Third. This sounds like it was recorded on a small budget as well. No big string arrangements. Perhaps those come when they make their next record for Siesta? Does Siesta really sell enough records in Japan to justify the recording costs of bands like say Edwin Moses. God I love Edwin Loses but the economics of Siesta Records is a complete mystery to me. The album title comes from this song. He sounds very Moore-Gerety on this one. Do you like the second Push Kings record? Well then you'd love this record. Surely. If not then you must be in Black Fantastic! Fun fun fun. And competent! Next is the falsetto number. Very Montt Mardie. Better than any Montt Mardie you've ever heard. Where did these people come from? They are Swedish. Are they MM fans? This is a ballad-ish number, it is a bit britpop this. No Shed 7 or Menswear, maybe a bit The Great Escape? Uh maybe not. I just watched a video for the third song. The singer mimes his words more oddly than anyone I've ever seen in a music video. Really. He's handsome, in group photos he's obviously quite pleased with himself and the rest of the band seem nonplussed. Or so my assessment would be rendered. He's a fine singer. But is he doing anything that hasn't been done better a thousand times before? This isn't Wham! after all. Everything She Wants was on the radio toay, that's an amazing song, nothing here approaches that level of greatness and if you aren't reaching Wham levels on the greatness index then you needn't take photographs with some snarky attitude. Of course, he's probably just a dream, the world's greatest person ever, but how fair would that be to be able to sing in such lovely tones and then not be a jerk? Not very fair. Let's paint him as dreadful instead. When projected dreadful it is easier to imagine him having a reason for being a pop star. I used to think the singer from Cats on Fire had a mission from God but he doesn't really. I've listened to the new Cats on Fire record, almost all of the way through, and it is tepid and mediocre. It's strangely muted, not out of some renewed interest in craft but just seemingly because the air has gone out of their balloon. Did they invest the entirety of the band 401K in Citi stock or something? Could be. Next song. Sounds like Edwin Moses. Much like Edwin Moses this is classic music through a white suburban filter. It's bowdlerized and safe. They don't have white guy afros and dashikis though. It's fluffy. This is perhaps why I love it so. They grew up listenign to Motown records and yet it doesn't really sound anything like Motown, perhaps Sterling Heights. It sounds more like ABC, another band influenced by Motown but only a cosmetic superficial sense. The circumstances that faced thse kids in Sweden must not resemble the struggles of young kids in Detroit in the 50s and 60s, not at all. And so competent mimickry is mistaken for soul. I am too cruel. It's a fantastic record, probably my favorite record this year. Not probably, yes. It's physical and breathless and sweaty and there seems to be an inimitable joy at least not from a native source within. It's the idea that a group of lovestruck teens in Swden grow up listening to soul music and decide to be a Swedish soul band and come up with a slick, variant that's far from unique but close ot marvelous that charms. Vaxala and I, a bit of the rhodes piano, funky/sexy guitar, some falsetto, slinkiness. The lyrics are out of the 'young soul singer's handbook' you can pick up at Barnes and Noble. It isn't clever witty or smart but it gets the point across. Let's dance. Again, I will remind you, it is performance that counts. I think Frida Hyvonene's lyrics are preposterously silly but honest man I would jump off of a double decker bus into the jaws of ravenous hyenas for her. They do have some moments of reflection that might intersect with my own sense of isolation as well. They quote the Smiths, specifically I Won't Share You in the second song, continuing the trend seemingly established relatively recently by Swedish indie bands(Montt Mardie, Honeydrips, etc...) of incorporating famous bits and phrases from more famous songs into their not so famous songs. "Freedom and Guile". Next song. Bombast. Splendid. Surely the land of the midnight sun should encourage more records such as this? I am reading The Ten Cent Plague and it's marvelous. This music would be analogous to a comic book hero in the wartime east coast sweatshop operations. The DIY ethic was there, similar to the shambolic spirit of indiepop bands when they were making horrible records and sending them around the world in padded envelopes filled with sweet tarts and licorice ropes. Little did they know that Shelflife records would in a later life blog about that one seven inch single on that one label from that one band from that one country that released a really mediocre seven inch with that mediocre couple of songs on it but that no one has heard in 20 years so its safe for me to say it is really quite fabulous. Like say East Village. Has the myth of East Village been erased now that you can easily download all of their dreadful recordings? There are still some holdouts I am certain the same deluded few that cling to McCarthy I imagine. Oh well. They will dismiss my irrational exuberance for this record anyhow. it is alright, we all love pop from different points along the spectrum, I tend towards those with molecules that glow like the globules of lactose hanging suspended in my colon and you might think that Tullycraft are the bees knees. Right now he's on about 'eat my heart'. It's cheesy. He mentions cheese. It's fun to listen to songs corny for the sake of being corny. Too often lyrics are written for what they mean to say rather than how they are meant to be heard. I listened to some of the songs from the new Stuart Murdoch thing. Nice. It's interesting that he only chose attractive young ladies as singers. Is he some sort of playboy pop enthusiast? He writes songs while he runs. I don't. Maybe the singers are fellow joggers. Physical fitness is cool. Today I've acquired a new goal related to running anyhow. I want to be able to run the lariat trail. Can you? Can you? Say it like Alec Baldwin. I've never seen the movie Glengarry Glen ross but I can quote that sales meeting scene word for word, I am dying to use it at work for our sales people. Vocoder. More gouda. He's a very handsome young man. i can picture him as a sex symbol in Uppsala. I seem to recall a sex study that said Swedes masturbate less than the average nation. is this because they are getting some real action regularly? I don't know why. I seem to recall the fact that sex patterns don't vary all too greatly from country to country only the veracity of responses does. I would understate my sexual prowess, though that is somewhat difficult because I'd rather not talk about it. When I am writing songs I don't think to write about sex. I write about deep philosophical imaginings hidden deep within my soul. Ha. I don't actually write songs. I wish. I fell asleep and dreamed of heaven with You Were Never Lovelier on the screen and truly I'd love to be able to write like Johnny Mercer. I'm Old Fashioned is miles better than anything on offer here but that matters little. This is still a blast. Now they are again very very Push Kings. This could have been somewhere near where the Push Kings should have landed on their third album. Somehow, instead, the Push Kings veered off to lame rock band land. Was it the move to LA, the being in Beck videos, the feather boas? Matt Fishbeck was mentioned on Momus' website a few years back as the lead singer of the Push Kings, ha, now he's working with Ariel Pink, I am sure it is dreadful. He was the most handsome Push King, he didn't deserve to have any ability, Joebama's America is about egalitarianism you know. Remember when everyone hated the Push Kings. I did not hate the Push Kings. I still listen to them every month. You should too. If you think that's crazy then you are probably the drummer. Sorry. Last song. Gospel. White kid gospel from the mean cobbles of Uppsala. This is lovely. He's a fine singer. In the video he looks really rather clean. Was he mentored by the Zazous or the Edelweiss Pirates? Grated carrots on my salad please. It is true Cats on Fire are deadly serious now, they have outsourced the job of fun to Sweden. Napoleon have gleefully taken up the task of making hearts smile. But I am not a fan of scarfs on men. This is reminiscent of the gospel track that ended the Far Places record. Mick McMick did not approve of that record. Everyone, including Mick, he was big stuff back then, hated the Push Kings. How ridiculous was that? I mean it is alright to hate all of them now, save for the drummer, but the Push Kings were fabulous. And so is this. Jason Pierce could take notes.

My Darling You! A.K. Art Frantic! It is Plastic Mastery meets Hefner? I haven't listened to the lyrics much, their playing and singings dazzle with passion. Dissonance, shabbiness, probably no fashion sense, probably silly hair, proabably nice parents. I like the racing piano and pounding drums. It sounds primitive, exploded from the chest, end of race breathlessness. Excellent. Second song. Very Hefner, I think, maybe. Less emo-girl wearing a sweater whiny, he has an "I'm not a boy not quite a man" voice. They have a cascading tendency in their songwriting, things build rather than evolve, things turn messy and thrilling and fiery. Is he Decemberists-ish? No, I refuse to belive that. The local "indie" station plays the Decemberists every other hour. It's strangely mediocre. They also play Debaser which is strangely astonishing. Did you live in a city where Debaser was played on the radio regularly? I did not. I suppose I could have heard it on CBC. After a John Prine song. Possibly. I think they are more Plastic Mastery than Hefner. I miss Plastic Mastery. Do you? You should. Florida's finest ever soldiers of emo. The flurry of emotionalism and cacophonous delectability are all very PM. Are they related? This sounds English. Is it English? I could look it up. I will. There's a bit of Libertines romantic punk rock hedonism in it but the lyrics don't seem as fashionable. Racing now, all sorts of ugly voices, it's beautiful! Aieee they are Swedish! This does not sound Swedish. Not at all. Are they really Swedish? No way. They do have terrible hair. It is slight Colin Annoying in the voice. The other EP is a dance ep. They look like American Frat dudes. Like ex-members of All American Rejects. Strange. i really enjoy this ep. It's got an intensity about it that is lacking from most other records this year, maybe it just feels close, as if it was recorded inside a tiny room in a large house on a very warm summer evening after midnight after the milk has been flowing for hours and the Risk boards is bowed from the humidity. This is a drone. A plesant drone, an acoustic drone with keyboard and drums. Nice. When they release an album it should be a public holiday.

Update: Oh, is there already an album?

Update 2: The album appears to be a compilation of eps. It's good. Kleenex Girl Wonder memories in the notes? In the good old Sexual Harassment days. Sorta.

Candy Claws In the Dream of the Sea Life. I spend about 2 days in 20 in Fort Collins. Candy Claws are from Fort Collins. Not a fascinating fact, I know. It is a nice little town. A college town. Lantern Fish. Static and a few moments warming up the instruments that they could mythologize about being found at yard sales on Saturday afternoons in Fort Collins, maybe off of Harmony Road. Possibly. This first song is pretty vague, some vague meandering on the instruments and vocals that you can barely hear. The lyrics could be killer! Possibly. Who could understand them what with the poor recording quality, the vocoder and the other whatevers. Whatever whatever, it is great. I am not feeling inspired at the start of this post. Sometimes I spend the day thinking of things while I am driving but today I spent a lot of time talking while I was driving. I was exceedingly chatty today. This is not normal. I was polite and charming and engaging. It was strange. I don't know why this is. I've stopped eating during the day and so maybe it is a side effect of subsiding on Glycogen stores rather than the immediate gratification of glucose. Who knows. I spent a bit of time talking about Toledo with someone from Ohio. Toldeo is a college town, "the Rockets", I used to work in Toledo as well, 1 day in 60. This may be a geography lesson disguised as someone writing about music without anything interesting to say even though I do really enjoy this album. It's in the Ruby Suns/Seabear/Panda Bear realm. Does such a realm exist? If only. The second album will be on Fat Cat records and some guy who used to play recorder in Our Brother the Native will produce and all of the kids in I Love Music land will loathe it! Hurrah. The first song has bled into the second, hard to say where things end and where they begin. Something like an earthworm. Earthworm rock. How do scene names catch on? Is there a central naming policy institute that hands down EU-wide dictates on what bands fit into which genres or scenes? Candy Claws are the vague rock band scene newcomers, they are following in the eminent footsteps of the Yes Girls. This could be a Yes Girls special edition of 50 limited special edition of 50 release. Damon T writes lyrics for the muddled, they are sometimes clever, always wrongheaded but he's bright and he is clever and he wears glasses very well. My head is too large for glasses. I need some sort of tortoiseshell oversized lenses to cover my fatfaced head filled with all of the things meant to disambiguate uncommon unsightliness. This is Animal Collective-ish as well. I think I've talked about Animal Collective influence before, they are not acarpous. It is both good, see Ruby Suns, and bad, see Architecture in Helsinki and Our Brother the Native. But in general I think the athletic, loosely structured, pop song disguised as a drone scene is something to emulate if you are a young band from say Nederland and you want to make it big just the same as Candy Claws have done. Look for Candy Claws to be selling out the 15th St Tavern any day, you will probably be able to hear them over the Galaga machine even. I am meant to see Candy Claws on the 10th. In Fort Collins. I've only been to one show in Fort Collins, it was a beautiful rock and roll show with Ladybug Transistor, when they were playing their beautiful Albermarle Sound record, Of Montreal when he wasn't slapping people in the face with his phallus, and the Apples in Stereo just when they started their rawk phase. Come to think of it we did not stay for the Apples in Stereo. Third song. Soft soft voices, droney music, it sounds prefabricated and jellied, compressed through a tube onto a popsicle stick. I still can't make out the words, loads of drop outs to just a voice and some random recorded effects. Could they be discussing local politics? It could be a manifesto on the outstanding failures of the Hutchison administration! A scabrous attack on he and his wife Cathy and their ineptitude. Or not. Doug looks a little above ridcule, well groomed, moustache, besuited, I wish I could present a reasonable appearance in public but I can not. I always look as shabby as Candy Claws sound. In their case it wears well, in mine it does not. Next song. It is sailing on sounds made is in different rooms in the same suite. They gave away their first record. It was worth the price of admission. It is meant to snow in Fort Collins this weekend and here in Denver as well. So much snow. No snow in the winter but now that Spring has sprung it is all snow all the time. It is around but a few hours and then *poof* 8 inches of snow has sublimated and been carried over the border to Sibelius-ville. Maybe this album is anti-Kansas. I don't know the nuances of growing up Coloradan. I know in Michigan we all thought Ohio mainly a waste of time. If we could have annexed Sandusky and had little else to do with the rest of the state no one would have minded. Next, Flashy Storm, field recordings, dissonance, whispers. Pehaps they will follow in the footsteps of the Fray and end up on Grey's Anatomy and become big stars and have their posters on teen girl's bedroom walls all over the Midwest. Are there Fray posters on bedroom walls? Those guys are pretty square. That new song of theirs is a bit of a drag eh? Denver's favorite sons. I am not actually sure which suburb they are from but with a sound that vanilla I am betting on Highlands Ranch. Who knows. This is like toy music, it should come with a handle to crank a little music box and the music will come out of a long tube that you need to hold up to your ear in order to hear. It's faux rustic goodness. I don't think that I am going to see them on the 10th. Sad. It was meant to be a blizzard today, but it was not. I did go out in the elements and a rabbit commited suicide by running underneath my car tire while I was driving along Orchard Road. Next song, Island Grows, more vagueness. Vagueness is the new non-vagueness. It was a strange sensation of guilt I felt after murdering that rabbit. I had seen rabbits die before. My brother was a faux rustic/outdoorsman when he was a kid, he was 10 years older than me, he would trap muskrats and beavers and opossums and occasionally a rabbit. i think he sold the pelts for drugs. Once he decapitated a rabbit right next to the Vega in the garage, the eyes fluttered, the body jumped around, my stomach went swoosh. He then chopped off the leg and I actually carried around a live rabbit's foot in my pocket for the next few months at school. Perhaps this rabbit was a distant relative. A member of the second diaspora of rabbits driven from Australia by the calicivirus(created by the mad scientists at Shrimper records?) and newly arrived on the brave shores of Greenwood Village. But he obviously could not escape the isolation and identity crisis as he was shunned by the natives due to his strange accent and unorthodox eating habits. In the days before the evangelicals arrived with their megachurches and rabbit proof fences it was a land of tolerance, a seeming Al Andalus under Abd Al Rahman. Greenwood Village an analog to Cordoba. But then came Ted Haggard. And it all changed. The rabits started to abandon the native language of their church and started to speak Ladino as a memory palace of the heart. But it didn't help the little friend that I now wear on my front passenger side tire. Next song, a bit of the Pony era Swirlies, small and tinny, unfocused, pleasant. In the future they may make an epic record which will cause the world to reconsider this plunge towards the apocalypse. But until then it's pretty good listening without consequences. I'd rather be listening to the Napoleon record, but it is a hometown pride thing. Not really. I am more excited about Michigan State beating Connecticut than Candy Claws making a fantastic record. It sounds as if their recording budget was around 11 dollars but that is part of the charm. As a songwriter myelf I can appreciate the tough economics of pop music in 2009. The tough times have not yet resulted in a flurry of quality releases. I like a few records this year but there hasn't been a standout release as of yet. Has there? Not Strange Winged Snail. I should be commenting on thir choice of wildlife. Should I not? Are winged snails good eating? I am looking at the shared Limewire playlist of the person I am stealing my internet connection from. It is interesting. Not to my tastes but if it makes her happy. I don't have any misconception that the music I listen to is better or more important than a Kid Cudi track. Most of what I listen to sounds amateurish and in this homogenized pre-digested world it requires a set of standards lower than the average person to appreciate. I met one of my neighbours today, she's lovely, I am thiking of baking her cookies. Sadly, I hope that it is not her that I am stealing my internet from because someone that lovely really should be listening to kate Bush and watching Vivien Leigh movies. Shouldn't they? The anlgophile girl of my dreams, all she needs is a hidden goth persona where she wears olive green cardigans, brilliant red lipstick and maintains the pallor of a corpse and we'd happily catalogue the demise of old England as it is neatly bookended by Vivien Leigh in Waterloo Bridge and Kate Bush on Hounds of Love. Candy Claws, they're American.

,

There is a website for the new Arnaud Fleurent-Didier record! This may mean that it could materialize at any moment! And there are subtitles. Meaningless subtitles, but still. No mention of Ema Derton.

Breaking Bad is awesome.

Update: Tweet tweet? Sorry. More substantial fluff someday. I've almost finished an entry on Alessi's Ark but I am very upset because the books I am reading at the library continue to be checked out from under my nose. Books that hadn't previously been checked out for the past 7 years all of a sudden disappear when I take an interest and get through the first 260 pages. What kind of social misfit checks out a book on "the teapot dome scandal'? I am halfway through a book on the Muslim experience in Andalusia, I expect it will be gone when next I look for it. I may be forced to get a "library" card.

Ah, the new The Projects album is out! Words of Love Broadcast in Code. Where?

Alessi's Ark Notes From the Treehouse. Chris Hansen could write this review. i remember before Chris Hansen was hanging out with the pervs he was spending his days as Bill Bonds' boy. One could sense the man love chemistry between the two of them when Bill Bonds sat in his recliner on Channel 7 Action News with his cigarette smouldering off camera and Diana Lewis glaring at him and young Chris, he was young, impressively bouffanted and would report with his pseudo-intensity the citywide panic over the the reported sightings of Ligers somewhere near Freedom Hill just after the mighty Strut had rocked the house. Chris Hansen is big stuff now. Alessi is a young girl. 17 or 18 or 19. I forget. This is a very nice record. It pegs me in the Borders Book music section demographic for certain. I don't mind. I am not cool. I am not Graham Coxon. I sit around the meeting table at work and look at the people around me and I am not cool but they don't know Graham Coxon anyhow. They aren't either but then at least I am not deluding myself. Second song, the first single. Sounds as if she's singing 'the whores' but no she's passionately baying 'the horse'. Does Chris Hansen need to make a call on your party line? Possibly. Some emo luminary is singing now. Alessi probably knows who he is, I don't. I don't live in Nebraska. Someone from around the meeting table is from Nebraska, a part of her life was spent in Crete. She didn't meet any skinny Minoans. First two songs are very short. I have been listening to this album in shipping containers while doing inventory of Christmas Lights in the heat. When the temperature goes above 75 degrees in March it feels depressive. The spring air has had all of its vitality pressed out by the big blocks of high pressure that insure sunny and mild and soulless as far as the eye can see. Possibly there may be snow on Monday, I am praying for feet. It may be millimeters. "I'm English so bear with me, I love you". That's sweet. This is the second single. It is in the coffeehouse damp squib pop mold of girls like Corinne Bailey Rae, Sara Bareilles, Colby Caillet. Sadly those are probably, all, their real names. Well not sadly for Sarah. I have known only a few Saras. My friend's best friend was a Sara, her bosses daughter is a Sarah, or perhaps she is a Sara, it is the same Sara nayhow. I knew a Sarah nursing student but I was in love with her best friend Debbie, owner of the bluest eyes south of the arctic circle and a chubby rear end. There is some suspicious sophistication in the arrangements here that do not probably belong to Alessi. Alessi was named by her parents after a company that manufactures upmarket Italian blenders. The company threatened to sue. They added Ark. There it is, the fruit of my research about this record. The usual pitch is that the more impressive your name surely the less impressive the person? Is Evelyn Waugh an impressive name for a young man? Perhaps Evelyn was smartly monikered in his day, I've thought that his son had the snappier name with his Auberon and yet he wasn't nearly as gifted. Alessi is not an impressive name, it is somewhat ridiculous to name your daughter after a blender, but I like it. I've been watching old interviews with Kate Bush recently. Kate must be maternal grandmother to all of these young girls. None share her abilities or her wit or her humour but she can't control who attempts to imitate her can she. This doesn't sound anything at all like Kate Bush. But it is meant to be kooky, earthy, mystical, look at the sugar horses in the videos. Horses in dreams are alleged to signify positive self-idnetity which is about right here in the age of self-esteem. When I spend my Saturday afternoons watching the combover interview Kate Bush she seems, already, an adult and she's just then only just out of her teens. Compare her to stars today in their late 20s/early 30s who are still more child than functioning adult. Maybe I am just reflecting in the love that I have for Kate Bush i her 20s but then being an idle teen wasn't quite the occupation that it is now what with managing 500 facebook friends, texts, cellular conversations, unearned accolades and praise, it is good that there is not a limit to the number of words that are possible to be spent in the pursuit of vacuousness or we might be in serious trouble. But Alessi doesn't seem vacuous.
She's absolutely charming. Fourth song. Almost all of the songs are very short. Her idiosyncratic delivery might become worn out and frayed after more than a few minutes. It's up, down, turned sideways and corkscrewed countless times within the course of a song. It's endearing. It's why we make claims about her charms. Will Alessi save the world this weekend by turning off the lights? Edward Norton has commanded we do as such and his will is supreme. I will unplug my soul. I wonder about the Alessi company's relationship with Mussolini during the fascist days of Italy when King Victor phoned Benito, ill advisedly. Were there Alessi espresso machines on the front lines fueling the impotent rage of the paper Italian war machine as it ripped through the neolithic armies of the Great Rift Valley? Possibly. Or when Adolf and Tojo visited Rome on holiday were they served smoothies blended by the finest in Italian cookery? Possibly. Of course on Earth Hour, that day of greatest human sacrifice, Alessi's all over the world will be silenced and the world will then have been changed by the sacrifice of having forsaken that last cup of cappuccino. Hallelujah! Alessi's Ark could play an acoustic show and save the world dozens of times ovr. This song is Constellations, acoustic guitars and strings and her kooky voice. Delightful. Really. The producer is meant to be someone impressive. I have no idea if his references are solid. I've been doing job interviews at my work this week and while it is true that unemployment is up we've only reached the level of the barely employable now. When unemployment was at 4% the ranks of the jobless were comprised of the unemployable. Only a slight upgrade has been perceptible in the human cargo that is passing through our office these days. Does Alessi make cigarette machines. Fine Italian cigarette machines. Alessi's Ark sings of smoking. I metnioned that I have been watching Kate Bush videos and in one set of comments someone has a long diatribe against Kate Bush smoking in one of her videos. Ridiculous. But then later I read about a fancy new dispenser that will decide if delinquents are old enough to purchase smokes by measuring the folds of fat around their eyeballs. The younger you are the more eye fat you possess, it is rather accurate, so alleges the manufacturer. Will there be a spate of cosmetic surgeries to enhance the eye fat of sad eyed ladies in their late 30s and 40s when these machines become sentient beings and take over the world one day and decide to sell cigarettes only to the fatty eye fat youth. Next song, Asteroids, it's adventurous. Not "more" adventurous. Being an innocent myself I wonder if I am attracted to this sort of thing because of its wide eyed wholesomeness, smoking aside, and it's escapist surrealism. Clearly Alessi populated her own little existence with sprites and automatic writing and walks through a dew glistened meadow under an amethyst moon. We could be friends, I could write her emails where I would discuss the tragedy of Lucrezia Borgia and her imperiled legacy among the great unwashed. She would write a song about george Clooney, I'd tell her it wasn't very good. And when videos started to appear of young barretted Austrians covering her songs on piano and ukulele I'll stick a pin into her head to make it go pop. It will be marvelous. I rather like this next one. Memory Box, semi-"Be My Baby" drums, frosted vocals and then there are multi-tracked vocals and lovely little lalalas. The last viewmaster reels rolled off of the assembly line recently. We never had a viewmaster, when I was a kid. Aside from Lego and Star Wars figures we didn't have a lot of the "classic" toys. All of our toys were hand me downs from our oldest brother who was much older than the rest of us. Friends had viewmasters and Snoopy Snow Cone machines and Mousetrap!. We made our own version of Hoth. A band saw, some styrofoam and colored electrical tape. It was impressive. Coraline resembled how a movie shot though a viewmaster would have looked. I think. I've never shot a movie through a viewmaster. I remember when I was in fourth grade I had an authentic genius friend named Jeffrey who borrowed my Star Wars figures to make a movie. I was spending my time having the Star Wars figures invade the Lego towns that we had purchased with money from the garage sales spent selling used Kiss posters and here he was filming epic portrayals of the trials of the human spirit using those same figurines. He was an odd boy. He spent all of his time with adults. I've searched for him on the internet and can't find a trace. I'd always imagined he'd have cured cancer by now but perhaps he's in his parent's basement still, trying to finish the movie that he had started in 4th grade. The unknown secret was that I actually scored higher on the Roeper examination than he did. I only test well, he was brilliant, I failed on most other measures of humanity. Alessi probably spends all of her time with adults. She's probably dating someone from the Kaiser Chiefs and as such she's having her spirit slowly ground into the same generic putty as everyone else and so her next album will surely be sad and pitiably mature when it should have been filled with the verve and excitement of youth. Adults! The Dog, can't quite make out the words, not a bad thing. She's young, she left school to become a musician. She's probably only just moved on from Harry Potter to the Twilight series. Soon she'll be reading Flannery O'Connor and adopting the grotesques for her own twisted visions of modernity and it will be lovely and marvelous. On the third album after having broken off her engagement to a Kaiser Chief. And she'll make three million dollars selling her songs for Cuisinart. Being in proximity to Bright Eyes does not seem to have had an adverse affect on her. Bravo. Last song, apparently this is the first song she had ever written, for school, for GCSE's. It's rather good. It has some smart playing on it and she was clever enough to go to the rock and roll cliche book when she needed it. "Oh baaaabeee", so Sonic Boom. There have been recent videos of Sonic Boom playing live and he's still playing while sitting down with his cool floppy fringe(I used to have the same) and his 20 minute versions of Suicide. I saw Sonic Boom play at Coney Island long ago, he taped down the key on his keyboard and I thought it was a dream. He seems moored in time, unaging, not timeless but time stuck. The best version of Suicide I ever saw was actually not from Sonic but rather by the Ropers. The Ropers opened for Bailter Space. Alastair Parker was standing next to me. The Ropers are/were horrible but they did a magnificent version of Suicide, strangely enough, and they do have Revolver too so it isn't at all a done deal that they will all end up in hell only probable. Song is almost over, it is the long epic-y ballad with guitar solos and a sorta Mojave 3 thing happening now. Big echoing voices, some sort of almost cacophony comforted with an injection of strings and loveliness. Well done.

The Blue Ox Babes release seems very exciting!

Update: Bury the Wake the President record and unearth it in 20 years. It might seem more exciting then.

Update: But I do like My Darling You!

Another Verlaines record appears to be imminent. A political record with a dire title. This song is a bit of the crooner-ish sugar and salt. Camp politics, a bit like Mark Russell.

Last Days Safety of the North. When you speak to most people, well some people, they consider Boards of Canada's Music Has the Right to Children to be some sort of high water mark for electronic music, certainly of some uncertain genre that could only be explained to you by whomever categorizes the genres at places like Boomkat. Perhaps, it is. I am not sophisticated enough to discern such things. Myself, I think Murcof is some sort of god and yet he's relegated to minor status these days, seemingly, though I am not certain, who knows why. I bet if I looked up Murcof on the Boomkat website it would be filled with superlatives, 'killer' being the most ubiquitous. But, this, is, Last Days. They are Scottish, just the same as Boards of Canada. Bored of Canada? The bus bound cannibal found not responsible for his actions. Madness. But this is different but this is the same. First track has an automated Boards of Canada feel but then allegedly the entire record has some sort of ll encompassing theme and all of these pieces have been well thought out, diagrammed and outlined and are where they are for sake of science. The rain falling now is symbolic, 'the rain on my car, a baptism'. No? She's chanting some things about 'the safety of the north' now, and the weather is still all there is to discern about the end of this track. There clearly are not enough concept records in this world. This is especially true in electronic musics. One of my favorite electronic records is Marumari The Wolves Hollow partly due to its having a marvelous concept of an interstellar battle between the wolves from outer space versus the wolves from earth. Oh and it has a marvelous cover painting done by Marumari's mom. Marumari's mom is great. I was out semi-recently and I saw three coyotes on the prowl. I saw them silhouetted in the full moon's light and my reaction was fear, so basal ganglia, and so instinctively, as bred by a million generations of my ancestors, I sucked in my gut and tried to look emaciated and unappetizing in the piercing eyes of these immoral killers. These may have been Marumari rejects. I must have succeeded because they headed on south to the wealthier climes of the Preserve where but a few nights post some woman was savagely attacked by three coyotes and barely survived struggling a few minutes later as she gave her breathtaking firsthand account to the local news stooge in her drieway with hair coiffured and indifference in tow. There were protests at Acme. These could have been my coyotes. I am not sure. Apparently they are endemic. They look like friendly puppies, really. Second song is playing, a folk song, guitar and electronics and a pretty female voice, not very Boards of Canada at all, perhaps a hint of Hood or Epic45. Very nice, pastoral and gentle. Beautiful. I am reading various websites. At these websites reside people who clearly have been regularly fed free records. And yet all they can offer in return for this generosity is some generic paragraph of praise and a sepia tinged bit of twee mush. I ignore all efforts by friendlies who would conspire to send me free records in return for a jumble of the meaningless piffle that I am so famous for. Famous for four minutes one day somewhere among some bodies. But honestly if someone has sent you a free record shouldn't you spend some of your "wit" in an honest appraisal. I don't know. I refuse to accept anything for free, much to the disappointment of many people around me. I can't even take a glass of water. Who knows why this is. Do you? But then it is the nice who are on mailing lists for nice bands. I am bitter and sorry and old. Next track. Guitar figures and a looping tape loop, woo, this is part of the concept. Making a concept record raises your music to the level of high art. Right? I mean Pete Townshend is the most important artist of the late 20th century. No? Why do people like the Who? They're really one of the most dreadful things ever. There are so many dreadful things that receive adulation and praise from all corners. The Animals, The Doors, Velvet Underground, The Go-Betweens, Felt. It's all rather mediocre and dismal really. Be honest with yourself. Next song. More guitar, churchy organ, a bit more expansive, repetitive. It does seem as if it should have been released on Make Mine Muisc. That is one of my go to comparisons these days, anything lovely and socialist should, by rights, have had right of first refusal given to Make Mine Music. I rather enjoy this record, I must say, it would be evermore splendid in the rain but rain is a mythologizing force in Denver. When My Bloody Valentine play here soon there will be rain. I predict it. It was very expensive, this nostalgia. I decided it was too expensive. I saw My Bloody Valentine twice. Once with Dinosaur Jr, oh dear, and once with Shudder to Think, oh dear. One of Shudder to Think is married to a Cardigan. It was alright. I do remember breathlessly racing to my keyboard to report the length of the "death chord" to my esteemed colleagues on the Prodigy Shoegazing board. That was the highlight. It is a portrait painted sad and disappointing in retrospect. Back then I would listen to Loveless while falling asleep, the second side, in particular, absolutely seamless and consuming. I love the My Bloody Valentine. Poverty A bit of a crescendo has just been talked over by me. A magnificent rush was ignored in a bit of falsely pertinent reminiscing. My Bloody Valentine will be portly. I don't want to see fat My Bloody Valentine. Next song, Thoughts of Alice, the vocodered voice is what makes me think of Boards of Canada. Some make claim that the voices on Geogaddi are their favorite bits, but they lie, it's like the people who claim their favorite REM song is Country Feedback knowing full well that that is the track most often cited by the band. It is like th people who pant and drip their pheromones all over the keyboard when writing about The Watchmen Here is a tip-- it is one of the worst movies of all time. I've never read the comic book. There are many Doors fans that allege that it is the greatest work of fiction in the entire canon of human literature but somehow I've managed to avoid it. Are there actually two versions of the movie? I am sure I saw one where Kelly Leak spends his days sawing off arms, cleavering heads and wearing a burlap sack. I am unsophisticated, I know, but the bits on Mars, it was torturous and sidesplitting at the same time, I missed the deeper emotional retinue trailing in the red planet's mystery. The young lady can't act. Her boyfriend with the glasses can't act. The blue man had a glowing phallus and the ultimate villain was a bit effeminate and nancy. I didn't feel any sort of impulse towards reading the comic book because there were apparently quotes lifted directly from the text in the movie. "This awful city, it screams like an abattoir full of retarded children.” One for Joebama. With thanks to the New Yorker. Kelly Leak wrote a journal. Unlikely. Next track, a post rock exercise in minimalism and crescendoed synths, lovely, this is a sparkling record. Does he have a beard? I would be so disappointed to find out that he did. The end. Next track, Life Support. There are long pauses between the tracks, I might have gone for the smooth uninterrupted segue instead, to better convey the overarching theme in a series of melodramatic shifts of tone and emotion. Now to cold radio static, a call out to the loneliness of the ether that risks crashing down upon us. Is this a story of a journey to the north as a last hope of refuge? Global Warming? Let us pray it is nothing so trite. Perhaps a knowing acknlowedgement of Frankenstein, the journey north in search of the fiend. There is the scottish angle that could be explored as well, the death of Clerval, the demented drudgery of the "work" in debt to the fiend's ominous threats. It could be a marvelous thing. But perhaps they are escaping something even more fantastical, a dream battle between ice cubes and 10 pound sterling, a battle between Snow Patrol and tears in X-Ray Eyes on quiz bowl, a battle between Funes and Obama. I don't know. This is a bunch of repeating motifs on a keyboard, loveliness all around. I make claim that I can't accept gifts, but then I purloin such things as this record from the clouds of counterfeit goods that enable scofflaws and cheats such as myself to diminish the entire concept of the 'value of labor' theory of work. Ah well. Marxism is silly. Marxists may carry nearly 20% of the next pariamentary vote in France. I am currently reading a book on the history of Paris. It's a violent place and it has been for nearly all of its existence. Is this the charm? I went to Paris in 1998. I found it ugly, dirty, graffiti bound and in the midst of an unhappy marriage between anitiquity and modernity. But I am awful, I had those thoughts, all the same. I've just reached the bits with the sun king but there was much also written about the Univrsal Spider and Les Mignons and the St Bartholomew's Massacre and I've been intrigued endlessly. What a godless place to have experienced so much unholiness. Next track, Your Silence is the Loudest, these vague tracks serve as bookmarks or perhaps travelogues, or dream cinema soundtracks while the action has been relegated to the unconscious. I don't know. I am unable to grasp the greater concept as most of this album is instrumental. Perhaps the notes should reveal thir intentions plainly to all who can witness them but I am unable. My apologies. I was not offered a program, gratis or otherwise. Someone may write to me in a few months with a full scale dissection of the plot but until then I will think the purpose is merely to beguile. Next track, This is Not an Ending, a whisper. Much of this set of musics could be thought of as some sort of cinema soundtrack merely unaccompanied by the bits of cinema that are superfluous to those engaged in theater of the mind. Pretentious. The titles give away small hints to the overall schema but only vaguely. Here a slow building of sounds tugging and compressing the air in between each other as they battle on from channel to chaenel, overlapping and building on each other with no obvious plan for surrender or an exit. It reminds of the Auburn Lull record in this tendency, there is less songwriting here than sound design, there are waves of dissonance dampened for melancholy and they rise forth in arpeggiated glow. Marvelous. It is so Auburn Lull. I should hope that one day Auburn Lull would play Denver. It has been some time since I Have seen Auburn Lull. I am certain that they would not be able to charge confiscatory prices for admission to one of their public scenes of musical conceptualism. Major eruption at the moment fading gently away to emptiness. Charmed.
The fields remember my father. The river trebles the effect of mercy. The tone of your forgiveness. Empty sentiments, one is the title of the next song. More sketches on guitar accompanied by someone learning the piano. A bit Ogurusu Norihide. Is that obscure? i don't believe that Carpark has much cache with the "in crowd". I only have a few Carpark records. Although, yes, Beach House are on Carpark. I rather liked them live. I listed it as one of the beautiful things from 2008. I have obtained both of their albums and haven't listened to either one. Who knows why this is? I don't. There are moments of loveliness in the background, much more interesting than the noodling in the fore-. Drones for loons. Homes for heads. Teds for reds. It's easy to be pointless. Indulge. Now the noodling has subsided and just the formless loveliness remains, like a void inside the heart of a lion. Ok ok, I will cease. Next song, Missing Photos. I was way off when I compared this to Boards of Canada. Sorry. I hadn't even the Scottish connection in mind when I came up with it, I honestly thought it sounded a bit like Boards of Canada but, actually no. I was wrong. Shocking. This song is one cascade of pretty synthesized sounds building on itself until nearly extinguished by the instability caused by all of the tragic tenderness and it fades back slowly to trembling loneliness and the vacuum of space. Marvelous. I am still drinking too much milk. Will I have deformed ribs from drinking so much anti-biotic infused milk? I drink the store brand for it is but 98 cents per half gallon, who could pass up such a bargain, it could be this brand that is most deformity inducing. I have a friend who has mysterious ribs inside of her that are attempting to break free from the rest of her body. She's a fragile little flower. Much prettier than she is aware. Her ribs should be content in so kindly a home. More self-replicating washes of amniotic oscillations, the low end an anchor but the trebly bits of dissonance are at less obscure settings, it's difficult to reach out and wrap your arms around the concept. I have been informed that it is very specific. Perhaps the last song will have lyrics that neatly tie the loose ends of the story up in a tidy little bow. Today I drove loads of big trucks. In my job I sometimes am required to drive large vehicles. Driving large vehicles is one of the escapes available to me. I roll down busy city streets with an elevated platform and 38,000 lbs of steel beneath me and I feel a contentment in my superiority, however mechanically sanctioned it may be. Normally I feel small and invisible even around those I might despise for slovenliness but when I have the controls of the large hydrualic loader I feel powerful and able to change the world, at least in this tiny bubble that I exist in while forgetting the meaningless traumas that occur in my job most days. A company went out of business, they owe my company a great deal of money, there are windows framing scenes of emptiness, the dust not yet settled on late night escapes into the blackness, bungalows boarded up. It's all very suspicious. Next track, You are Stars, profound title, pretty song, sarcasm tag omitted meant in the former. I once attached a theme to Greg Davis' Arbor this unfocused idea of the evolution from unstructured coincidence to structured disasters. How the record moved from ambient prettiness to rather detailed and elaborate prettiness. I could have used the evolution from the primordial state of the universe to the state we observe today, though yes entropy is increasing all along the timeline, or I could have used the metaphor of childbirth from conception to birth. It would not have mattered, I could have deadened each concept into something turgid and uninspiring. I've done some research, apparently Sam Rosenthal owns Projekt records. Oh. Sorry. A lot of the music is silly, but the consolation is that I am not to be taken seriously. Obviously. Here I am spending the initial stages of a Friday evening writing random sentences about an obscure record from the fields that remember my father. Now the pastel sounds are placed deep into the distance, a sense of perspective is readily apparent on the record and a splash of everyday life arrives. Is that a lawn mower? A bicycle with a Carl Yastrzemski card in the spokes? I don't know. It's all important to the concept, the all important concept, it's Scottish. It's escapism. Perhaps the concept just guided the formation of the record, a leading light in the undiscovered treasure of a shared ethos of the cosmos. Perhaps. It's all very pretty, I don't understand the deeper ramifications as bells toll now and even now we move into deeper solemnity. Why aren't they advertising the new quarters any more? It always seemed an odd thing to feel compelled to advertise money as if there might be any other option. Is this to coerce people into going to convenience stores and converting their paper money into coin? I don't understand. I understand very little these days. It could be a brilliant concept for a record though, the conspiracy to eliminate all paper money. it's brilliant because it is very real and dark and dangerous and filled with intrigue. Dan Brown may already be on the case. It's happening all over the world, in many places you need to carry a pocketful of shrapnel about in oder to conduct commerce. In Ireland there is plastic money, or well...there was in 1996. I remember having a Sunday Roast in Dunedin with a man from Ireland who pulled out his plastic embedded money, rather proudly. This man was prodigious, he was able to ftp his email even then. I had two reasons to be jealous. Is this the last song? Ah yes, more pretty things cobbled together tenderly. A bit of the marching band drums, a drum procession, a march into the bosom of unforgiving bleakness. Scotland seems a bleak place, loads of desperate freeloaders living casually off English good will. Gordon Brown is Scottish. He's bleak. This isn't bleak. It's dark, but darkly uplifting and elegant and rather wonderful. A brief glimpse of strings in the buildup to something empty and lovely. Handclaps, humanity, perspective, tunnels, endings.

Camera Obscura My Maudlin Career. All good bands must make a country record at one point in their career. This is the law. Are Camera Obscura a good band? I have, at moments of weakness, vacillated on that question. I really enjoy the first record. But then surely the School will surpass them even on their debut record? If ever they went out and made an out and out pop record it might be marvelous and joyful but as it is they semed destined to drag the anchor of soppy melancholy around their neck forever. French Navy is very smart. Very pop, lush, strings, lyrics that are vague enough to be universally sweet and uplifting even as she sounds completely and utterly defeated in the track. Jari Jalapeno will surely become the producer of choice for the kids. He made Speedmarket Avenue not be horrible, clearly this is a mark of a genius. That Speedmarket record just keeps getting better you know, the sleeper record of 2008 in some circles, I know all of you love it, sure. Second track is best. It's the mid-tempo pop number, it's genius, it shares a title with a U2 song and it's romantic and disarming. Her voice is something odd on this album. Clearly, her voice has been heavily treated. She's amped up the squeaky nature in reflection of poured forth emotions but all on the smoothed out tip. Is it because she is so terribly choked up singing these more personal laments more so than when she was on about those looks that kill and 80s fans? This is just about perfect, largely due, in my ears, to the mid-level settings on the eq, everything is set at the same level the music, the strings, her voice, the reverb, it comes off semi- Meekish, minus the hair trigger. Now the drop, it is completely obvious but still I fall hard for it as it arrives just after the string filled bridge, aaahhhh...The lyrics are a bummer even still but we don't mind. Why is she so unhappy? They've made their Payless Shoes millions and yet still they collected money from the Scottish government to record an album in Sweden. They've got naught to worry about haven't they? DId they bury their friend yesterday? have they had random strangers crash through the fence of your property and die on your property while one of tyour friends is performing CPR? Probably not. They are seemingly too overwrought to have cancer. I am terribly rude but sadness colludes with loneliness with devilish manners. I rather like this album. it might be difficult to glean that from the start of this entry. I spent this past morning acquiring the final bits of my new expensive smile. Will I smile more? I don't smile. I don't. Third song. if I could I would smile while praising this record to random strangers who don't die on my doorstep. Very country, lower, not a slowie in slowie sense but a respite from the booming production. Maybe they have a Trevor Horn record in them someday but then they don't really make physical music so what would be the point. This is lush and delicate and loud for it, but I am not convulsed by the spirit of the proceedings to move myself in embarrassingly uncoordinated movements. I was thinking of writing about this in a combined entry with the new Cats on Fire but i decided against that. It was meant to be a diagnosis of The Smiths vs. Country corollary. Were the Smiths greater than country music? Should Morrissey make a country record? Uh, yes! This is lovely things. I use the Bats as the standard for bands that don't offer much in variety by way of a recording career. I don't mean to disparage the Bats by this practice as I really do love the Bats and honestly, every record by the Bats is worthwhile. I do still mean to write about the last one. But Camera Obscura seem afforded a higher status. Sure they rode in on Belle and Sebastian's coat tails but they semed to have some sort of predestination with greatness but it still has not arrived. Not for me, not even with the revelations presented within this record. Possibly for others. Essentially these are still Camera Obscura songs, as they should be, but you know, "you're perfect, please change". Fine. As I've said, I rather like this album. But it isn't going to supplant the Giorgio Tuma record in my heart any time soon. Perhaps they should listen to Giorgio Tuma as much as I do so to see the power of making do with less, just because Mr Jalapeno can make your music sound ever more ornate and gorgeous doesn't mean the songs have proven up to the task. Another country song next, a bit Tarnation this, with the echoey whistling guitars, the hollowed out drums, her voice sung from beneath a dusty streetlight somewhere just outside Topeka. I really do not approve of the way she pronounces 'Murder' as 'mudder'. Is that Scottish being Scottish? I am Scottish. Theoretically. I say 'murder'. On the last record at this point of the record there were songs that sounded similar, the country interlude, 'Dory Previn' and 'False Contender'. Some bands seem to structure all of their records similarly. Why is this? Do they do it consciously? Two upbeat numbers, a couple of down tempo numbers, a mid-tempo single-ish thing, donwtempo to close the first side and then two more upbeat numbers, etc...do bands still sequence with the idea of sides to a record? Is this being released on vinyl? 4AD is big business now so it seems pointlessly not in the interests of their P&L to continue with such luxuries but there is the anorak contingent to consider. Some labels still release 7 inch singles, they're quaint. For my own thoughts I would venture a question--Why not just make everything digital? Am I the only one who has stopped fetishizing physical manifestations of records anyhow? I could be. Next song, a trip to the carnival, it sounds like Emily. It's filler. Will the School record be the Camera Obscura record that everyone is waiting for? Possibly. She from the School doesn't seem quite as miserable as TraceyAnne, she should still be cheered having escaped from the godawful The Loves through. I remember when first I wrote about Camera Obscura I mentioned the singer's name was Lindsay, only because that was th first name listed in the notes, back when I had physical manifestations of music to leer at, and I figured the conceit was always that the singer was first among equals. I was wrong. Was Lindsay a male or female even? i have no idea. I've downloaded the first Camera Obscura single when they had some other prominent songwriter in the band, horrid, making Traceyanne the main songwriter was the correct decision but she needs to have some pie and not make everything so heavy. Is anyone going to be singing along to this in concert? When the Payless hordes show up at the front of the stage will she be unable to restate her maudlin career because of the love radiating out from the kids who have memorized her torment down to the funny bits of punctuation. This is a very nice song, it is quite good filler. It isn't Pushkin good but, you know. Next song, But first an interruption for important news items, oh dear, The Good Fairy is on TCM on March 29th, have your DVR's at the ready friends! It's absolutely marvelous. Anyhow, this song, it's Swans, almost over. Over. Now to James, I rather like this, it's a quiet one but it feels emotional and poignant, different from most of their songs really. Normally it is merely a question of tempo to segregate their efforts but here it is a measure of temperament. I imagine it is autobiographical and it feels as if she's gutted and desperate and it's wonderful because of it. Mostly I don't care if musicians actually mean it. I've started writing songs, ha, and I don't mean anything I write. I just wanted to use the word pillion in a song. We'll be big stars in Japan and I probably will neglect this blog to the detriment of my two readers but you know I'll be off running the Akaishis with Haruki Marukami and I'll have long forgotten my life as an unread blogger/naturalist. I did spend most of the day in a library, after my smile was constructed, this music would have been appropriate really, the classic librarian;s band. But I wonder what is the point of going to a library to use your laptop? I suppose there is the free wireless network but do patrons not get roused to action by being surrounded by reams of knowledge about the known universe that you can trust, that you can touch, smell, consume at your leisure? I suppose not. I wonder how I would have been as a student in the internet age. There are loads of high schoolers in the library and they don't have a single book at arm's length but instead they have windows and cursors and the like and they have a gullibility that lends them to trust by dint of their naivety. There is this temporality to life now, so much of it is lived in the present, more than at any other time in the past. It is all so frighteningly shallow. Clearly when Camera Obscura release a record that owes as much to the 1950s/60s Nashville as to anything else it feels not just antiquated and anachronistic but inessential, disposable, and for someone else. The age of narcissism is not surely made for Camera Obscura and yet for all of the faults I am trying to find with them this song Careless Love is an effortless bit of melancholia and heartache that spins on its lovely little axis and radiates warmth and humanity and the two dimensional figures in the library could do with a little more of each. Splendidly. Now the title track. Tis was the first track that I had heard from the album and I absolutely fell in love with the music, the unease of the piano, the slow horns, the general resigned yet poised nature of the effort dazzle. But it is here where I worried over the lack of vitality, the dreariness of the vocal performance which while perfectly formed within the structure of the song makes me worry for the state of mind of Camera Obscura when while in the throes of success they have a spillover of grief to burden the listener with. I suppose releasing an understated piece of bleak personal portraiture when on the brink of "stardom" (as relative as that term may be when applied to them) is to be admired, and could be judged similar to when Belle & Sebastian released The Boy With the Arab Strap to confound the unreasonable expectations of the time. But then they grew older, they became a real band, surely Camera Obscura is already old and already serious about their career as musician and eager to stretch out. Perhaps not. I am offering only idle speculations from my cosy nest among the timid set. I love this song, it's one of their finest achievements, it's artistic and delicate and flowery and if the entire album had proceeded with that sort of broad mindedness it might have been even better served. As it is Jalapeno has done his heroic bits in shadows but the band seems mired in their comfortable heart. Forest and Sands, a mid tempo country number. The production sheen is impressive, the ambience filters everything that comes through it with a patina of aged before its time-ness and it adds a darkness to the proceedings that benefits the overall mood of proceedings. Truly, if you are not keen to the ideal of sadness this is not likely the record you will desire. It's the antithesis of the Girogio Tuma record which while even more laconic than this record has a heart full of sunshine to illuminate the world at large. There is an eerie hum to a lot of the playing, surely conjured mysteriously, these guitars are dragged slowly across a darkened sky, the drums hollow, the voice rustic. It's a marvelous record, really, I've listened now a dozen or so times and I enjoy it most of all on this current listen, more than on any of the previous listens. But I am receptive to melancholy these days having been chastened by the harshness of human existence when you are normally moored and geared to the acceptance of the status quo. This isn't a life challenging or even a life affirming record, but this doesn't meant that they have not figured it all out, sadness and cruelty reign supreme. More of the nonsense about structuring or sequencing records on this the second to last song as it is conspicuously spare and minimal, a Sun On His Back for the next generation. My friend Kate first introduced me to Camera Obscura when she put Eighties Fan on a mix-CD, just after Yukari Fresh. They've never been far from my heart since. They do deserve their success. They work hard. They write beautiful songs and seem committed to their craft and I appreciate the ethic involved but it would almost seem more noble if here at the apex of their creative abilities they took a chance and gave in to hope instead of competence. This song makes me think she'd make a fine solo record given the chance. I am not sure what the point of it would be other than to hear more songs of this sort, a single guitar, an echo of a violin and her lovely voice. Sara Lov's solo record has been revealed to the world and well it is a real revelation, dispensing with the notion of her being the plaything of some pop Svengali by virtue of being somewhat marvelous. Last song, bouncier, semi-Motown, restrained, tender. Honey in the Sun, it reminds of the first record more than either of the previous two. A bit of the I Don't Do Crowds innocence and moxie mixed in with a producer who is capable of carrying them to heights they don't seem willing to push themselves to. Anyhow, it is still really rather excellent.

Update: And now a fancy video for French Navy. Hmmm...

Giorgio Tuma My Vocalese Fun Fair. One of the great travesties in undocumented pop lore is the frigid reception that greeted the second Majestic album when it was released just a few years back. It was an artifact of startling beauty, it was beautiful, it was lovely and it was charming. But seemingly only a few moments after being released it was being offered/cast off at cut rate deals on Shelflife's website. It did not connect with those scant existing Majestic fans who perhaps thought that they should have remained mired as shoegazing ideologues nor was it a hit with the unidentifiable thronged masses who remained blissfully ignorant even of Majestic's existence upon its birth and death. This record then sounds a good deal like that record. An ominous omen. The hushed, lullaby-esque tones remind greatly of Majestic. At least by measure of my inferior ears. It also reminds of the softer, less erudite moments of Simon Fisher Turner when he casts his ironic eyes on reverie and mirth. I'd offer comparisons to the High Llamas as well but I come here not to disparage Giorgio Tuma but rather to praise him. First is a brief instrumental. It passes by only as a soft breeze welcomed with lungs made from arms stuffed with good intentions. Second song , Two Happy Sad Guitars, gentle, flowing, romantic, dreamy, perfect. The first three minutes soar on a wheeze and then for the denouement a charged rush of vitality to the extremities, a pulse quickened, a shuffling business of steps made in time and brushed drums, syncopated rhythms. It's a marvelous entry into this Italian's expansive heart. Next, Saltamontes. Very Majestic. Of course, beauty such as this, it did not originate with Majestic, it is more legitmately descended from sun drenched 60s paisley pop, lithe, delicate and innocent as a fawn seeming. I need beautiful things to surround me. And not beauty for the sake of beautiful visions but that which derives from character and integrity and strength of being. Someone I work with, someone I was rather close to, not only by assocation died recently. Today, I attended the funeral and being the deplorable narcissist that I am, why else write about myself under the guise of writing about music, I reflected, in between silences of the catholic mass in Spanish, on my own death scene and the cast that would inhabit that lonely spectacle. I thought of an empty mortuary and some kind words from a disinterested pastor as he cast my soul into the abyss with a half hearted shove of encouragement mixed among paraphrased prayers for the departed. Last week, I watched, helplessly, as dozens gathered and lamented with frightful bursts of sorrow and thought first of the enormity of the tragedy that had betaken this family and then, later, to my own friendless existence. I have friends. I am sure they would grant more to me if I offered friendship in return but too often I advertise a dubious self-sufficiency and aloofness rather than warmth and compassion. It isn't intentional. It's genetic. Prevarications abound. But I am not hostage to nature. I should not take solace merely in beautiful pop songs. Let's Make the Steven Cake!!! now playing, easily do I drift softly into its embrace but I receive little to transport with me into the moments after its finale. It's gorgeous. But modern internet accessed man can not survive by pop music alone. Beauty is an essential. Beautiful friends that overlook your flaws and see the better purpose of being in you even as you desperately attempt to camouflage it from the world at large for fear of making a commitment to anyone or being dependent on anyone for happiness whose outlines are curiously unknown. But when Majestic released their album and it was universally ignored it must not have been labeled a soul crushing defeat, surely not, they must have fallen back on the hearts of those that lift them up in the moments when music is forgotten. They become renewed in the gaze of children and the kind words of sincerity. All of these things, missing. It is a character flaw to reflect on one's own travails when others are so so much greater but I am a failure at most things it would seem. My friends are like pop songs, beautiful and because of my coldness, ephemeral. I spend my weekends in libraries reading of Machiavelli and the Teapot Dome Scandal. I've seen photos of Warren Harding and his baby elephant/golf caddy and I would not have imagined him being the imposing ladies man that he was. He was, by rights, also fabulously corrupt, inextricably linked to his caddish appeal, and his administration one of no promise whatsoever but you know it makes for an interesting read. Nan Britton - the mistress of the broom closet, not played by Vivien Leigh, unfortunately, Emma Hamilton took precedence. What infamy unsung. But then to reach the point of conjecture of strangers it seems you need only to have been a scoundrel or scallywag. Good men like Fortino will be unremembered in print or legend but will live beyond their days in the blood that infuses hearts of those that loved them and people will strive to live to better serve their memories. I could only hope for anything to compare, anything at all. I recently had a physical, I am apparently in top health, unfortunately, so I am doomed to a life made longer by its barren nature. Unless, of course, I strive to listen to pop songs with the proper intentions, unless I embrace those who offer only kindness and cross out the deficiencies in my character that make me wary of anyone offering a smile. Astroland by Bus, very Simon Fisher Turner this. At least until the chorus arrives and then it is once more rather Majestic. So majestic. I've mentioned that this is Italian. He sings in English. It has been released on Elefant. A public monument of exquisiteness to savour. When at the library in between pages of political scandal, and after reminiscing on Leonardo's efforts to divert the Arno for the means of torturing the Pisans I look out the window to monuments of our own age. Have you noticed that all public monuments now are abstract and fleeting. Reading the story of the philosopher of power or that of the pope's ceiling it was much different then, there was a shared understanding that art was a reflection of the graceful nature of relatable experience so that even the illiterate among the thongs crushed beneath the heel of Il Papa Terrible would understand the genesis of Michelangelo's masterpiece. There is a recent addition to the skyline here in doleful Greenwood Village. It is several stories high but it most closely resembles a vertebral column. It doesn't possess any poignant influence outside of the designer's mind. It's a pleasing shape, for the visually obsessed, but it doesn't have any power to disrupt the soul's workings instead it is a purely sensory appeal and I suppose it is the tenor of the age that celebrates the engineer over the artist but I can't help imagine it was also the result of some bureaucrat championing the generic over the possibly vulgar. At the aiport here there is a flaming blue horse that greats those that are about to leave our fair metropolis. It's hideous, but at least it sparks controversy and opinions from each side. It is also baleful since it took the life of its creator, Clerval escaped harm. The spine barely registers. If a rogue chinook were to compress the air and topple it tomorrow the fury of outrage would remain nonexistent. It would defy Hardy's paradox. But all public monuments here, now, are similar. Marsico is playing. Funny. The name Marsico means a great deal to me. For no obious reason to anyone but it shapes a great deal of my existence. Aside from that it's a marvelous track. More of the Elefant earnestness mixed with a Siesta elegance. How did this not end up on Siesta? Clearly someone dropped the ball. We're experiencing drought conditions once more and I imagine the monuments to the dust bowl days of the "oughts" will be something sensibly vanilla, a sombrero on top of a bench or some such. But what if instead there was a physical manifestation of La Nina. An epic casting of the fiery fates nude and controlling human existence in broad defiance of engineers and bureaucrats. Marvelous dreams. Giorgio Tuma could be booked to play the unveiling to a scattered mass of shocked onlookers. A cure for the boredom of consensus. But who are these heroes of the age that doesn't exist that have yet to be born. Apparently Michelangelo was molded into caste genius by fact of having been subcontracted out to a wet nurse from a stone mason's background. I was subcontracted to a plastic bottle, a recycling stamp on my forehead. Others suckled from obsequious middle management types that live in fear of the thrills of everyday risk. Better a variation on metal vertebrae than a human face to threaten the imperious natural world. What cowardice. Are you aware that there still exists in France a law banning the positive depiction of cowardice in literature? Implausibly, it led to the popularity of Tin Tin. What happens when Spielberg defaces all that Tin Tin people hold dear. I don't know, secure the banlieues. I am rude. Apologies. There is the new movie Polytechnique which chooses to absolve the brave souls that walked out when a crazed gunmen demanded all of the men leave so that he may deal with the women, to not have granted them absolution would have made the film illegal in France, and later they sit paralyzed by consensus when shots rang out. Who knows what we would do if faced with a similar situation but it is not wrong to reflect that the wrong choice was made even among the vagaries of uncertainty. Giorgio Tuma is not concerned with this, however. I am perturbedly focused on death. I apologize. Giorgio Tuma is filled with the spirit of the living, a calm set of notes in this torrent of unease. Faye's Flying Shoes. Beautiful beautiful. Beauty is an anomaly. It should not be thus. There should be romantic troubadours populating the public consciousness like some pestilence but sadly public proclamations deal less with affairs of the heart and more of the satisfaction of appetites and desires. Giorgio Tuma will arrive in Denver some day and walk through the streets wounded by the indifference of the city around him. He will carry these pop songs safely in his heart and shelter them from cruel iniquity of fate and stare at the sun and attempt once more to extract the life giving affirmations and process them into heart stirring delicacies but he may not be able to sustain. We will all then be to blame. I've contributed to his downfall because instead of rushing up several flights of stairs onto towering high rises and proclaiming the greatness of Giorgio Tuma to the world at large I will selfishly hold him close to my heart and mind. Sirens Pray For Us. It is a perfect pop record, really the sort of thing that Pop'n'Cherries could describe much more effuisvely and with much greater efficiency than I could ever imagine. Last song. A wordless outro of assured farewells. Many happy returns. Our wish.

Loch Ness Mouse have new songs on their myspace. Yikes! It makes Grizzly Bear seem like heaven in comparison.

New Grizzly Bear has leaked. It is as tedious as the last one. The kids will love it! A symphony for pococurantism.